Friday, March 6, 2015

I write this post with a sore right arm from throwing playground balls and soccer balls around a gym. At indoor recess (for the bazillionth time this winter) I found that the kids loved chasing balls that I threw. I just threw them. They would retrieve them. They begged for it. I literally had a line of children waiting for me to throw a ball that they could chase. It had to look ridiculous to anyone looking through the gym windows.

Gotta love working with kindergarteners.

Robots:
As mentioned in the beginning of last week's blog post, this week we used Dash to "build" teen numbers. We set up six empty SOLO cups as bowling pins, and used a tennis ball as a bowling ball. Using Dash, we bowled the ball toward the cups, knocking some of them over. On the whiteboard, we had a full ten frame and an empty ten frame. In the empty ten frame, we drew circles corresponding to the number of cups knocked over. We then used the ten frames to figure out the new teen number.

Kid Lit:
Interactive books are so fun to read aloud. The kids get really into them...they'll even respond to questions or comment on things going on in the book. They love them. This Book Just Ate My Dog by Richard Byrne is on our list of favorite read-alouds. Bella loses her dog as he walks across the gutter of the book. Help arrives in various forms, but suffers the same fate as the dog. Bella needs the reader's help to escape the gutter of the book. It's a really fun read that draws kids into the story, and they love how it ends. My class begged to read this book over and over...so we did.